


Flower Power

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [262]
Category: The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:40:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6985534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>trcunning requested: Martian radiation gave Mark Watley ~powers~ - really dumb ones and/or botany ones, like a middle aged professor Poison Ivy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flower Power

 

The first time he notices anything is while he’s still living in the Hab, back when he was murdering shit with his Pathfinder-murdering drill.  But his life involves a lot of drilling and cursing and heavy lifting and then more cursing, and it’s not like he’s running his little Mars Home Farm any more, just the experiments that he’d set up to stop himself self-murdering out of boredom.  They’re little better than alfalfa seeds on a wet flannel, and there’s no reason for it, but they grow, and grow, and grow.

Mark puts it down to a quirk in the oxygenator’s output levels, and goes back to drilling shit with his Pathfinder-murdering drill

 *

The second time, it’s in the gloriously un-red, un-starving luxury of the Hermes, on route back to Earth.  Beck has cleared him to reclaim his experiments from the mad German, but nothing else, and so Mark has been spending most of his downtime in his botany lab, watering shit and explaining to the flowering plants section why Aquaman is the bomb.  

“They must like it?”

Johanssen moves like a fucking cat in zero G.  Mark’s still not fully used to be around others, and his personal space field is still mostly the size of a planet.  But Johanssen is smiling, and Mark mentally shuffles over the crazy to make room for her.  “Like what?”

“You talking shit.  Vogel could barely coax them into not dying.  It’s like a fucking jungle in here now.”

Mark lets himself barrel roll in the low G, timing it so he ends up in front of a plant on the cusp of blooming.  “That’s because my plants can sense he’s one long-haired cat off becoming a Bond villain and fear for their little leafy lives.”  He stroked the leaf, smiling as the flower twitched like a sigh and started to unfurl.  “Hey, check this out.”  He drifts sideways to make room.  “Fear my botany powers.”

* 

The third time, he’s in his room at Johnson, quietly seething as he walked slowly around the room with his little mister.  Gravity still dragged at him, but he’d got to the point where he wasn’t gasping like an asthmatic hippo just for walking.  He wanted to run, or at least walk angrily, along the beach for miles, until his fury burned out, but for now, he’d have to accept the limitations of his flaccid muscles and water his plants with menaces until his frustration boiled off.

Fucking NASA.  He liked that they came back for him, eventually, but still, recuperating just meant he was trapped at the heart of the bureaucracy.  

Being trapped on Mars was scary as shit, but at least he didn’t have to fill out anything in triplicate.

There was a short, sharp knock at the door. “Mark?”

Mark turned, squaring his shoulders and adjusting his grip on the misting bottle as the door was pushed open without an invitation.  Kevin, the head headshrinker out of the battalion of psychologists trying to get into his psyche, poked his smarmish face around the door.

Most of the shrinks were ok, for shrinks, but something about _Call-me-Kevin_  made Mark’s skin crawl.  

“Mark, thought I’d just pop by…”

 _In my downtime_ , Mark thought to himself.

“…and see if you’d like to chat?”

He’d been given a heroes welcome.  He was a living legend.   Lewis had told him to use it while he had it.  He was taking the advice.  He lifted his arm and squirted Kevin square in the face with the mister. “No.”

Kevin shook himself like a drenched cat.  “Now, there’s no need….”

Mark tried again.  “Doc, I’ll see you at our scheduled session tomorrow.  Have a nice night.”

Kevin opened the door further, and something in Mark snarled.  “No.”

The door slammed like a shotgun under the weight of greenery that piled up against it like a barricade.

The mister thudded against the carpet.

Not daring to breath, Mark flexed his fingers.  The vines rippled in command.

Mark exhaled hard and started to grin.


End file.
